6215
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'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes]
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Full Idea:
For contingent, men do not mean that which hath no cause, but that which hath not for cause any thing that we perceive, as when a traveller meets a shower, they both had sufficient causes, but they didn't cause one another, so we say it was contingent.
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From:
Thomas Hobbes (Of Liberty and Necessity [1654], §95)
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A reaction:
Contingent nowadays means 'might not have happened', or 'does not happen in all possible worlds'. Personally I share Hobbes' doubts about the concept of contingency, and this is quite a good account of the misunderstanding.
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8416
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Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley]
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Full Idea:
Reductionist accounts of causation cannot distinguish laws from accidental uniformities, cannot allow for basic uninstantiated laws, can't explain probabilistic laws, and cannot even demonstrate the existence of laws.
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From:
Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 2)
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A reaction:
I am tempted to say that this is so much the worse for the idea of laws. Extensive regularities only occur for a reason. Probabilities aren't laws. Hypothetical facts will cover uninstantiated laws. Laws are just patterns.
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